Chinese students, store owners, and street cleaners reflect on Obama’s win:

BEIJING (Reuters) - China welcomed Barack Obama as a youthful president-elect with the energy to tackle the financial crisis now threatening its economy and an ethnic heritage that could help America reach out to the rest of the world.

Excitement about the billion dollar race filtered down to the streets of Beijing on Wednesday, where ordinary Chinese citizens who have never voted themselves and some who could not even name the candidates embraced Obama’s message of change.

“The black guy is a good choice, he has so much more energy than the other one, who was far too old,” said Han Xue, a new father who runs a small cigarette and alcohol store and followed the results on a television behind the counter.

The dramatic victory, in which Obama carried some states that had not voted for his Democratic party in decades, was a major boost to America’s reputation.

“I am very happy U.S. history was made. I think in a lot of Chinese people’s eyes America was a racist country, even today the television said that white people wouldn’t vote for Obama,” said Li Nan, a student at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences….

TASHAN, China (Reuters) - Angry residents wailed and protested as rescuers in northern China kept hunting on Wednesday for dozens of victims feared trapped by a deluge of mud after a mine waste reservoir collapsed.

State media reported searchers have confirmed 56 dead after heavy rain triggered Monday’s collapse of the holding pond at the Tashan mine in Shanxi province. But some news reports and local officials have suggested the thick mud that blanketed hundreds of meters could hold more dead, possibly 100 or more.

Dozens of friends and relatives hoping for news of people feared trapped were kept away from the site by police. Many of the dead were apparently migrant workers from southwest China.

Some relatives and friends of the missing accused officials of cold-hearted incompetence.

“It’s not because of the rain. It wasn’t a natural disaster, it was man-made,” said a migrant worker surnamed Zhang, who said his friend was probably killed…

KHARTOUM — Kidnappers killed five Chinese oil workers on Monday out of nine they had been holding hostage in central Sudan for more than a week, the Sudanese Foreign Ministry said.

The ministry blamed the Justice and Equality Movement, a Darfur rebel group, for seizing and killing the Chinese.

“Five were murdered. Two were able to escape with minor injuries,” ministry spokesman Ali al-Sadig said. The two workers who escaped were now in the hands of the government, Mr. Sadig said, while the kidnappers were still holding the remaining two.

“This incident happened without any provocation,” he told Reuters. JEM leaders were not available for comment.

The kidnapping was the third such incident in the energy-producing state of South Kordofan in the past year…

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said his government must assume some responsibility for the latest milk powder scandal in which at least four infants have died and tens of thousands fallen ill.

Many Chinese milk companies were implicated and a few of them apologized this week for their involvement in the latest in a grim series of food- and product-safety scandals to blight the “made in China” brand.

China’s Health Ministry said 5,824 infants were still being treated and six were in serious condition.

“We feel that although problems occurred at the company, the government also has a responsibility,” Wen told the magazine Science…

“BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese police have detained six people suspected of producing and selling melamine, the chemical at the center of the country’s scandal over tainted dairy products, the official Xinhua news agency said.

The arrests were made in Hohhot, capital of the northern region of Inner Mongolia, which is China’s main dairy-producing area, Xinhua said in an overnight report, citing the municipal government. …

The arrests follow the detention last week of 22 people in Hebei province suspected of being involved in a network there for producing melamine and selling it on to milk farms and purchasing stations.”

“BEIJING (Reuters) - A strong earthquake hit China’s remote northwestern region of Xinjiang early on Monday, but there were no immediate reports of casualties, state media said.

The quake, which the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) put at magnitude 5.7, happened at about midnight local time near China’s western border with Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan…”

Skype complied with China’s spying more than necessary:

“HONG KONG/BEIJING (Reuters) - Savvy Internet users in China began avoiding the version of Skype offered by its Chinese partner two years ago, but news it filtered and recorded text messages has sparked new worries about the global firm’s commitment to privacy.

The U.S.-owned Web communications firm faces a backlash at home and in China for apparently allowing core principles to be compromised in order to meet the demands of Chinese censors, analysts warned.

‘We may never know whether some of those people whose conversations were logged have gone to jail or have had their lives ruined in various ways as a result of this,’ said Rebecca MacKinnon, an Internet expert at Hong Kong University.”

A Reuters report shows telling scenes from China and offers summary and analysis:
“The position that China now finds itself in is a result of unscrupulous farmers and engligent food companies. Tests show that in an attempt to cut costs, the nitrogen-rich compound melamine was added to water down milk, in order to pass quality inspections. Contamination was thought to be restricted to powdered baby milk, but officials have confirmed that 10 percent of liquid milk from three of china’s dairies was also tainted with melamine. The companies have been named as Mengniu Dairy Group, Yili Industrial Group, and Bright Dairy…”

American economists compare China’s path with Japan’s:

“BEIJING (Reuters) - Now the Olympics are over, a new game is under way: telling China’s economic future by reading the tea leaves of Japan’s past.

Teasing out economic parallels is a favorite academic pastime, but it can be just as treacherous as extrapolating prevailing trends into the indefinite future. In the 1960s the Philippines was the second-richest economy in Asia after Japan. Now it is bringing up the rear.

Still, looking at Japan provides some useful pointers as the world ponders how long China can keep up the growth of nearly 10 percent a year that it has enjoyed since it embarked on market-oriented economic reforms in 1978.”

China’s Games, the biggest ever, have ended:

“BEIJING (Reuters) - The Beijing Olympics ended with a blaze of deafening fireworks on Sunday, bringing down the curtain on a Games that dazzled the world with sporting brilliance and showcased the might of modern day China.

The sporting extravaganza failed to quell criticism of China’s human rights record, although the International Olympic Committee (IOC) gave the organizers the thumbs-up and said the Games would leave a positive legacy for future generations. …

The IOC said 43 world records and 132 Olympic records were broken in China, which spent $43 billion on the event — three times more than the budget for the 2012 Games in London…”